


Play-doh comforts

by Anonymous



Category: WordGirl
Genre: Gen, villain!steven
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-27
Updated: 2018-03-27
Packaged: 2019-04-08 16:58:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14109909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Wordgirl reaches out to Two-Brains and learns some harsh truths about who Steven really was.





	Play-doh comforts

**Author's Note:**

> Play-doh comforts represents the fragility of blind loyalty under false pretenses.

She is nothing if not persistent in her pursuit to understand him, or perhaps more a constant attempt to peel back his layers and find her friend hidden deeply down in him, ready to rise up again as the friendly and fun scientist. To take up that mantel one more, Two-Brains thought of it as dreadfully boring, and far too predictable. She's prattling on about something from the bars of his cell, something about goodness or heart, useless really. He rolls his eyes, continues to stare blank up at the ceiling as he tunes her out and goes through a mental checklist of all the ways he's escaped prison. He tries to do it a different way each time, mix it up a little, keep it fresh.

She sighs, deeply, “Are you even listening to me?” she whines.

He turns his head to face her from his spot in his bunk, she got her hands wrapped around the bars and her forehead dropped against the flimsy cage they think will hold him, “not really. Hey how hard do you think i'd have to hit the wall to go through it?”

Her face scrunches, “What?”

“We're talking escape plans here, Wordgirl!” he sits up and swings his legs over the side of the bed, “keep up!” he orders as if he had any authority over her, snapping his fingers a few times for emphasis, “I'm wasting precious time not eating cheese in here!”

She shakes her head, leans away from the bars and uses them to support her weight with her tight grip, “you're unbelievable.”

He scoffs, “if you didn't want to help me bust outta here, then why'd you even come?” it was a rhetorical question, he didn't really care why she decides to visit him, and he makes his disdain aware by snatching his pen out if his lab coat pocket and searching around for paper to start plotting on.

“you know why I came.” she says tiredly, but there's the slightest edge to her voice.

He pauses for a second, shakes his head, and gives up on his search for paper as he flop backwards onto his bed before sliding off of it into a sitting position on the ground, “You're so naive.” he would have called her foolish, is foolish was even a word people said anymore, she knew she was chasing a shadow yet she was still here, she still believed her old friend had a chance. She didn't know anything.

“He was my friend.” she's suddenly filled with conviction, “He was good! Better than you!”

He ignores her, scrawling notes and equations and rudimentary blueprints on his lab coat in lieu of paper, and he sees her waiting for a response, the bait set but the trap not sprung.

“well?” she snaps, “don't you have anything to say?” 

He pauses in his scribbling, taps his pen on his chin as if working through a tough math problem, and finally- “You have no idea who he was.”

She breathes hard, shakes her head as if asking herself why she bothered indulging humoring any of his rants, “Yes, I did. He was a good man-"

Two brains snorts and she stops, glaring at him through the bars, “what?” she asks.

He doesn't say anything for a very long time, leaning his head back against the cushion of his bed to expose the hollow of his throat, “mice don't understand the concept of good and evil.” he looks up at her.

Her mouth thins, “Doctor two-brains.” she warns.

“They don't! Their brains-" he motions to his grotesque second brain, a forever reminder of horrible misfortune, “ They’re too small to know or make a conscious choice to be one or the other- they just know instinct. Like hunger, like squeaky.”

She learns forward, understanding suddenly that this conversation was more serious than she thought, that perhaps the can of worms she’d pried her way into had rotted a long time ago “where are you going with this?”

“An animal- it can’t be evil, wordgirl.” he can see her worrying the bars of the cell, he thinks if he looks close enough he can see them bend like clay beneath her fingers. She's holding her breath. “The hunger- I got the hunger from squeaky,” Two brains tilts his head, stares at her, wonders how long she can’t breathe. Was she like a human in that aspect? Only a few minutes at most? Or longer? “Steven was the one who made me mean.” he says it like the fact it is.

He counts four seconds before he hears the bars start to groan under the stress of Wordgirls superhuman fingers. He doesn't look away, and on the surface, she seems like shes a greek statue made of stone.

“You’re wrong.” she says simply, her eyes like hardened crystals or lava or some unholy mix of the two, hot and angry and hard.

He smiles like a broken porcelain doll, he expected that. Of course he did, obviously, And he snatches up the pen he’d dropped in his lap, forgotten and alone, and continue to plot. He doesn't respond. He’s said his piece.

“I said you’re wrong.” Wordgirl frowns, leans forward until it seems like she’s about to stick her head through the bars, “Steven was nice!”

He huffs out half a laugh, if you could even call it that, and doesn't pause from whatever silly and pointless ploy he’s writing, “The dude experimented on animals, wouldn’t say he’s the best grape of the bunch.”

She sputtered, righteous and godly anger flashing across her face, “Don’t- dont you talk about him! You-”

“He told you he wanted to learn, didn't he?” It’s a question that doesn't need an answer, he has all of their memories, even though he felt disconnected and distorted whenever he thought about them, “For his next book. Superheroes and you… every villains dream book, a _how-to-beat-your-enemies-for-dummies_ book. He had meticulous notes, your strengths, your weaknesses. You really think the guy was a good person? I’ll tell you what he was good at- putting on a show.”

Two-brains knows she's trembling, can feel the motions rolling off her in waves, “That- it can’t be true!” she shakes her head, as if trying to dispel the sickly miasma of the truth.

He looks away, the pen forgotten in his hand, and decides he’s bored of this conversation. He’d already wasted enough brainpower on this, and with no cheese to show for it too! Pointless. He stands up, paces his cell and looks around for weak points on the window, a way to jimmy loose a bar or something-

“Why?” he jumps, spinning around, and she’d withdrawn away from him, hands crossed in front of her chest and eyes wide and wet.

“Oh jeez you’re still here?” he jumped, blinking owlishly at her.

“Why was he a villain?” she pressed on, voice sharper now.

Two-brains shrugged, “Why is anyone a villain? Fame? Fortune? Power? Take your pick.”

“Tell me why.” her hands are clenched into fists, “what made him that way?”

“What do you want me to say?” Two-Brains threw out his arms, empty handed and irritated, “That he had a bad childhood? That he saw a world so sick and broken and wanted to fix it? That he thought had to prove himself?” as if any of those could justify evil, as if this would excuse Steven of his cloying cruelty.

She takes a startled step back, his frustration a surprise, but her face hardens again and she takes another step forward “if that's the truth, then yes!”

He sighs, bone deep and rattling, and rubs at his temples, losing stream faster than he could gain it, “The truth is that some people are bad without any justification. Steven, he didn’t need a reason.” The name feels awkward and heavy in his mouth, “The world was a challenge, and he wanted to beat it.”

“A challenge.” Wordgirl echoes. He can't tell what she’s thinking.

There is silence again, and this time it is comforting, welcomed, Two-brains wishes she would just leave.

“What about you?” Wordgirl asks suddenly, voice warbled, “Why do you do what you do?”

He shoves his hands in his pocket and shrugs, “I just want cheese.”

Wordgirl barks out a startled laugh, and doesn’t know what to think.


End file.
